Editorial

Citation

Roslender, R. (2011), "Editorial", Journal of Human Resource Costing & Accounting, Vol. 15 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jhrca.2011.31615baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Human Resource Costing & Accounting, Volume 15, Issue 2

My move from Edinburgh to Dundee has now been completed and I am housed in a spacious new office with lots of room to spread out my various work projects. Inevitably, there have been some communication difficulties as a result of the move, including responding to forwarded messages, which then return to me rather than going to the intended recipients. Plus trying to master a new email system that has some interesting procedures associated with attaching files to outgoing messages. Given the many other aspects of such a move, it is a minor miracle that it has proved possible to put together a new issue as quickly and painlessly as has been the case.

The current issue contains four papers, which collectively reaffirm the global interest in the broad field of human resource costing and accounting. The first paper, by Ousama Abdulrahman Anam, Fatima Abul Hamid and Hafid Majdi Abul Rashid, explores the relationship between the level of intellectual capital disclosures and the market capitalisation of companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia, the Malaysian Stock Market in Kuala Lumpur. The authors report a positive relationship between the extent of disclosures and the market capitalisation of companies, which also extends to a number of control variables including book value, firm size and leverage. Rosalind H. Whiting and James Woodcock’s paper is also concerned with intellectual capital disclosures, this time in the Australian context. Overall, the level of such disclosures is found to be low, with relational or customer capital the most commonplace. Those companies operating in the hi-tech or knowledge-intensive sectors are in the vanguard of intellectual capital disclosure, as are companies who are audited by the Big Four accountancy firms.

Sang Ho kim and Dennis Taylor’s paper also uses data from Australia. It looks at whether there has been any increase in the extent of disclosure of labour-related costs after 2005, the year in which Australia adopted IFRSs, and in which AABS119 and AASB 101 superseded AASB1028 and AASB1018, respectively. The paper reports that significantly more companies now disclose such information and that a greater extent of voluntary disaggregation of information is now evident. The final paper in the issue comes from Greece. Sandra Cohen and Sotiris Karatzimas surveyed human resource managers in 100 Greek companies regarding the current extent of their involvement in the budgetary control process. They report that, overall, the level is only modest but is more extensive in larger companies, which remain relatively few in Greece, and where there is a larger focus on human resource management activity. Cohen and Karatzimas commend a greater level of interaction between the finance and human resource functions in the future.

Since the previous issue was finalised, the Emerald Literati Network’s 2011 Awards for Excellence have been announced. Many congratulations are, therefore, due to Vivien Beattie and Sarah Jane Smith, whose paper on intellectual capital disclosures in the UK, published in issue four of volume 14, was judged the best contribution of 2010. The papers by Holmgren Caicedo and Martensson and Abhayawansa and Guthrie were highly commended. Christian Nielsen was named best reviewer, an accolade that will surely spur him on in his role of the Guest Editor for a special issue on the role of human resources in business model performance, details of which can be found in issue four of the previous volume.

Robin Roslender